One The Most Important People At Tumblr — Derek Gottfrid — Is Out Of The Company

Derek Gottfrid, who joined from the New York Times in 2010, is
leaving, according to a memo David Karp sent to the staff.

The memo makes it sound like Karp fired Gottfrid.

"I've made the
decision that it's time for Derek to move on from Tumblr," says
Karp in the memo. "Derek's contributions are
immeasurable and I am tremendously grateful for everything he has
done for me, the team, and our users."

(Interestingly,
when Marissa Mayer, CEO of Tumblr's parent company, Yahoo, fired
her COO Henrique De Castro, she wrote something similar: "I made
the difficult decision that our COO, Henrique de Castro, should
leave the company.")

We're not sure what happened. We've heard Gottfrid was ready to
move on since his stock had vested following the Yahoo
acquisition. We've also heard that Tumblr was a less "cool" place
to work and perhaps Gottfrid was getting some blame for that.

Regardless, this is a blow for Tumblr. While his title
was VP of Product and
Engineering, Gottfrid was almost a
"shadow CEO" according to people close to the company. When he
joined Tumblr it was still a messy company, but he stepped in and
helped organize it.

He kept taking on new responsibilities, and eventually he was
leading things on a day-to-day basis. He led product, then
engineering, then he got Tumblr into the ad business, and he
was a key
part of the Yahoo deal.

In many ways,
he was Tumblr's Sheryl Sandberg, but without the big name or
profile.

Our
understanding, based on conversations with people familiar with
the company, is that Karp had an idea to monetize Tumblr with
pinned posts. That didn't work. So, Gottfrid came up with the
idea for ads. He pitched it to the board, and the board liked
it.

Basically,
Karp is a great, talented product visionary. But he is not a
sharp businessman. Gottfrid was the businessman.

In 2012, when
Tumblr was thinking about its next 12 months, the company decided
to start raising money. Gottfrid suggested the company approach
strategic investors like Google, Twitter, Facebook, and Yahoo.
Those conversations led to Tumblr selling to Yahoo for $1.1
billion.

Here is the email from Karp:

Team —

I've made the decision that it's time for Derek to move on from
Tumblr.

Derek's contributions are immeasurable and I am tremendously
grateful for everything he has done for me, the team, and our
users.

With this change, I will be taking a more active role in managing
Derek’s teams. Derek leaves big shoes to fill and I’m excited to
see you all step in as we move forward. I’ll be following up with
his teams over the next couple days to answer any questions,
address any concerns, and go over changes in reporting.

Thank you all for all your efforts and patience during this
transition. I’ve truly never been more excited for Tumblr’s
future.